Play It on the Real Thing: HI-SCORE, Hannover's Video Game Museum

Most museums ask you to look, not touch. HI-SCORE in Hannover does the opposite: here, more than a hundred milestones of gaming history are switched on and waiting for you to play them, on the original hardware.

We wanted to feature it, because a house that lets you experience the whole medium hands-on is the perfect companion to an archive like ours, which preserves one device in untouched, original condition.

HI-SCORE, Hannover: five decades of gaming, all on original hardware.

A Video Game Museum in Hannover

HI-SCORE is a video game museum in Hannover that opened in 2023 and has grown into Germany's largest interactive exhibition devoted to gaming history, spread across more than 1,000 square metres. Its permanent exhibition is built as a journey through the decades, so you experience the medium's evolution step by step, from the earliest machines to the present day.

More than 100 key milestones are fully playable, from original arcade cabinets to consoles and handhelds, and the museum uses only authentic hardware. The result is a genuine, tactile encounter with more than five decades of gaming history, not a wall of photographs.

Recognised, and Serious About Preservation

This is no pop-up. HI-SCORE is officially recognised as a museum, listed with its own institutional identifier and a member of the museums association of Lower Saxony and Bremen, and it is run largely by the non-profit association Gaming in Niedersachsen e.V. It is expressly dedicated to preserving and restoring digital cultural heritage, and works with local partners on education and media literacy alongside its events, workshops and tournaments.

Taken back to the early days of gaming

Play It, or Preserve It

That shared commitment is where our paths cross. HI-SCORE keeps gaming history alive by letting you play it on the real thing; the Game Boy Museum keeps it alive by preserving and documenting one machine in complete, original condition. The living game and the untouched artefact, together, tell the fuller story. If a visit leaves you curious about the little grey handheld in particular, you can follow the whole original Game Boy story in our complete DMG-01 guide.

Plan Your Visit

HI-SCORE sits in the heart of Hannover, with tickets, opening hours and a busy calendar of events on its own site; the space can even be booked for private occasions. You will find everything at hi-score.org. Go with an afternoon to spare, and do not be surprised how much of the history you can actually play.

This is one of the places gathered in our guide to the video game museums worth visiting.